Nota Bene #99: Heed the Peace Gnome

“You just pick up a chord, go twang, and you’ve got music.” Who said it? The answer is at the end of this post. Now on to the links! … “The future is controlling your devices with a simple wave of the hand” … “This is a significant day in the long-running battle to get a fair and just settlement for the victims of this wicked drug” … “What began as an innocent mistake ended in a vicious attack on an honor student” … “It was a stunning turn of events whose significance is still coming into focus” … “The worst destructive element this Earth has is man” … “2009 was a very good year for one of the more ambitious figures in conservative politics” … “The country is primed for malfeasance” … “Those of us who love freedom, believe in making our own health care choices and know to our very core that the government does not own us must never become helpless” … “Prosecutors were prepared to indict both Bill and Hillary Clinton for their roles in the Whitewater and Lewinsky affairs” … “There’s been a real sea change in how the public views the universe and the search for intelligent life” … “Richard Nixon was the greatest peacemaker in US history” … “When this society mocks intellectuals as effeminate layabouts whose work is impractical, it is belied by history” … “When generals start trying to suggest publicly what the president should do, they shouldn’t be generals anymore” … “The amount of herbicides used on genetically engineered crops has increased, not decreased as might be expected” … “The Chinese government sent a chilling message to advocates of political reform and free speech” … “We are advocating very large-scale shifts in land use” … “Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments” … “The somber and anguished way that veterans in Russia spoke of their time in Afghanistan was a disturbing reminder of the hurdles that American forces now face” … “Officials probably picked out Moore ‘because she was near the front of the line and was a cute little Irish girl‘” … “This is an area that we have to pay real attention to, but it’s not an area that I get called about by reporters or have to answer questions about at the White House yet” … “Hospitals have been attacked by drug gangs seeking to finish off wounded rivals” … “The Pentagon has never, in the 14 to 15 years since they’ve been subjected to regular audits, had a clean audit” … “He conspicuously flaunts great wealth but has never given any credible explanation as to its source” … “He was arrested for talking with a foreigner” … “There is a vast consensus among progressives on what they want, but there is also mass confusion—even self-delusion—as to where they stand” … “In around two years, the numbers of youths—including young women—will start to decline” … “‘Fifteen minutes of fame’ has had its 15 minutes of fame” … “If government is the tyrant in China, who is the tyrant here?” … “This enormous hole in the cosmos defies standard cosmology and might just be the imprint of another universe bumping against our own” … “Yes, just a casual stroll by one guy personifying the American military might that has damaged helped Iraq so much” … “An outraged American public is proving no match for the mix of corporate money and influence that has been marshaled on behalf of the financial sector” … “Curbing gun use is linked to lowering the homicide rate, officials said” … “He warned against tree surfing, calling it a serious traffic violation” … “The final figure will be 308,400,408” … “Already the echo chamber is roaring with the all-justifying cacophony: ‘Terror, Yemen, al-Qaeda, Homeland, Bomb, Terror, Yemen, Yemen, al-Qaeda'” … “If this conservative admits that peace, tolerance, due process and progress are ‘liberal messages’ then doesn’t that also mean that war, intolerance, arbitrary authoritarianism and regression are conservative messages?” … “A serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts” … This issue’s quote was from Simon John Ritchie, better known as Sid Vicious … And finally, “I
didn’t think anything would surpa
ss the Academy Awards, but I was wrong.” ∞

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In a biological arms race with weeds and pests, nature will always win…but agribusiness will profit immensely along the way.

I saw a lot of Afghan War vets in Russia. Probably more than i realized, actually, but one sticks in my memory. I saw him regularly at an underpass on Nevsky Prospect. He wore his BDU’s and a blue, Spetsnaz beret sat in his lap. He couldn’t do much, the arms and legs of his BDU’s were pinned up to the stumps where his limbs used to be. He’d sit there all day, and in all the times i saw him, i never saw him speak. He never even showed any expression, just the thousand yard stare. Sometimes i’d see a woman come to wheel him away in the evening.

And you know, when 9/11 happened and the war drums sounded for the march into Afghanistan, mostly what i thought about was that veteran. I still think about him…i don’t know why, but he’s one of those images frozen into my mind that presents itself, sometimes unprovoked. Our streets may never be littered with so many obviously broken men, but the situation is one of degrees only. We’re breaking them.

Years from now the veterans of our Afghan War will probably gather like the Russian veterans do now, to mark something that they couldn’t change but that changed them forever…something that their fellow citizens will do their best to forget or ignore.